Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/732

716 may, there are other parts of rhetoric that have a prior claim, because of more general value. De Quincey's account of ancient rhetoric is a fair enough summary; but of late years the canons of rhetoric have taken a wider scope. In Prof. Bain's "Rhetoric" or English "Composition," written with the scientific exhaustiveness and originality characteristic of the author, we have a great advance upon Aristotle. In addition to the old material completed and methodized, we have a body of rules hearing upon the order of words, the principles of the construction of sentences and of paragraphs, the principles of description, narration, and exposition. Of these subjects, the first four are admirably suited for the school-boy, description more than narration or exposition—although these also might be valuable—because it is regulated by a compact, complete, and easily-managed body of maxims.

What is there, then, to prevent this department of English composition from being practised in our schools, instead of composition in a dead language, where the sole ambition is to be grammatical? A variety of objections might be urged, which I proceed to discuss one by one. They will be found to disappear on consideration:

1. It may be said that such studies are not ample enough to keep our school-boys busy, and so fail in the most fundamental requisite of a school-study. How to arrange words, how to form sentences and paragraphs, how to make an easily conceivable description—why should not that be learned in a few lessons? If so, why are years spent in teaching our boys to avoid a few stock pitfalls in Latin composition? The reason is obvious. The rules or principles you may learn in a few lessons: you may not be perfect in the practice of these rules after years of study. The same thing is seen in every art. The pugilist or fencer soon learns the guards theoretically: it is a long time before he can promptly parry the hit or thrust of an adversary. The musician knows all the notes, and where he should place his fingers to bring them out, long before he can play at sight. We can all of us remember what we should have done: the opportunity is often past before we remember what we should do. In English composition, as in every thing else, theory and practice are two very different things. Take, for example, two points: how to place qualifying clauses in the most advantageous light for the words they qualify, and how to apportion the emphatic places of a sentence. These are embodied in Prof. Bain's work, and treated of in isolation, the one by Mr. Herbert Spencer, the other by Mr. Matthew Arnold. The principles are within the comprehension of any boy of ordinary intelligence. And yet they may be practised for years by a grown man without insuring infallibility in rapid composition. Here is a wide field for educational exercises, a field wide as the writings of the language, beginning with easy examples and reaching on to the more difficult. No expensive apparatus is required; wherever you have sentences written in English, you may fall to work. And the principles I have mentioned are but samples.